 Welcome everybody to today's Field of Fork webinar. My name is Scott Swanson. I will be your host today, because Julie is our presenter. So we wanna thank you for joining. I'm with NDSU Agriculture Communication for those that don't know. Today's Field of Fork webinar brought to you as always by North Dakota State University Extension. This is the seventh year we have done this series and we're so glad you joined us today. The next slide shows our upcoming webinars. Next week we'll have Share the Bounty, Gardening to Fight Hunger in Our Communities with Esther McGinnis. And on March 30th, we got Developing Food Safety with Byron from University of Nebraska. The program is sponsored in part with grant funding from the USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service. So we ask you that you complete the short online survey that will be emailed right after today's webinar. And as a thank you, Julie will provide prizes to the lucky winners of the random drawings. So be sure to put your complete address on the follow-up form, including city, state, and zip code. So again, welcome to today's webinar and I am pleased to introduce today's speaker, Julie Gard Robinson, is a professor and food nutrition specialist at NDSU Extension. She develops materials for people of all ages and does research and outreach in nutrition, food preservation, and food safety. She has written a weekly column, Prairie Fair, since 1997. Well, thank you very much, Scott. And thanks to all of you for joining us today. We wouldn't have these webinars if we didn't have participants. So I thank you for being ongoing participants. And it's great to see people from all over, even Canada. So welcome, everyone. So today I'm going to cover a lot of things and I'm gonna do things maybe a little differently than some of the other presenters. I want you to be actively engaged in what we're doing. So I will be asking you some chat questions from time to time. I might ask you to raise your hand using the more button or the extra button that we have. So we'll make it as interactive as we can. Keep you awake. It's two o'clock and it's the week of daylight savings. So I will be visiting with you primarily about food waste and strategies on how to avoid wasting food. We'll spend a little time talking about food recalls. I'm going to spend just a little time talking about food preservation because one of our future speakers is going to cover that in great detail. And then I will talk about composting and some resources to raise awareness. And I do want to acknowledge Midwest Dairy Council for providing me with some of the slides that I adapted in their honoring the harvest program. So let's get started. So I have an assignment for you. I am a teacher, a professor. So at the end of today's talk, I want each of you to write down two or more action steps that you could take to help with this food waste issue and then put that list on your refrigerator or you could text yourself on your phone. And then in a few weeks, check back on your progress. So that's your assignment and I don't need to know what you put. So let's start with some definitions. There are two things that we can consider. There's food loss shown in the picture and food waste. So food loss can include several things. You can see that microbiological spoilage issue on the left with that orange. Food waste is throwing away the food. That's perfectly edible. Food waste is an ongoing concern in the US and probably across the world. So if we were to break down the different amounts of food waste that we would, or waste in general that we would find in landfills, I'd like you to look at this pie chart and you'll see the one circled. Food accounts for 21% of the landfill. That's a lot. And other things include rubber tires, leather, textiles, 12% paper, paper board, 15%. Yard trimmings, 8%, metals, nine, glass, five, plastics, 18, wood, eight. But food, 21%, that's a lot. And much of that food is edible. So here's your first chat question. So go to the chat. I know you know where it is. So how much food in pounds or ounces does the average consumer throw away each day? Okay, I see some different amounts. Anywhere from ounces to several pounds, 15 pounds. That's a big one. All right, we're seeing lots of differences in opinion. And this is what I found. The average person throws away about 1.1 pounds of food daily and that adds up to about 401.5 pounds per year. So that's a lot of food. And in fact, very unfortunate statistic, 40% of food produced in the US is wasted, 40%. So if we look at food loss by food group, you can see I've written them out in red or the font is red, 66% of food loss comes from grain products, fruits, vegetables, and dairy. And just the three food groups, fruit, vegetables, and dairy accounts for 33%. And if you wanna interpret what each of these numbers means, there's no test on this, but the first number in each of the little call out boxes stands for billions of pounds of food. And then the second number is the percent of the total. So again, 66% comes from those four food groups. We may think that we're throwing out a lot of eggs or meat or those sorts of things, but actually fruits and vegetables and dairy account for the most, probably because they're the most perishable. So where does all this food waste happen? You might think it's the institutional food service, restaurants, full service restaurants, grocery stores, industrial, industrial is the best as far as not wasting food. Who's the worst? It's the consumers in their residences. Residential food waste accounts for 45%. So that's why I'd like each of us to think about what we could do and to set some goals for ourselves. So all this wasted food has a lot of consequences. Certainly there are economic consequences. There are environmental consequences and food security consequences. And I hope you take time to listen to Esther McGinnis' program next week because she's talking about donating food to food pantries, food that we grow. But certainly all of these factors are part of the consequences. So if we look specifically at economic impact of 160 billion pounds of food at a rate of a dollar per pound, that's $166 billion. And then it costs another billion dollars to dispose of all of this food. I think we can do better than that. And then there's food security impact. I'm sure most of you have heard that by 2040, between 2040 and 2050 we may have about 9 billion people or 9.7 billion people actually. And that is gonna take a lot more food to feed all these people. So we'll need to increase our production by 70% to feed the world. And those of you who live in the Midwest which I think that most of us do on this particular webinar, we will need to produce more food where we exist. So you can see it's an upward trajectory that we're seeing in the next, not so long. 2050 isn't all that long ahead of us. So as I said, food insecurity is a huge issue. In fact, one in seven Americans doesn't have enough food. They're food insecure. And that comes from feeding America. And that's a great place to look for more information about any of these topics. So if you just Google feeding America you will find lots of additional information on this topic. So these are some tips to avoid wasting food. First of all, be aware of how much food you throw away. Maybe put all the food that you were throwing away in a bucket or something over a course of days and then really become aware of the foods that you're throwing. Are you not eating those bananas or those apples or drinking all the milk or whatever it happens to be. But awareness is the first step. We are enticed by grocery stores. I just finished a column. Scott mentioned I've written a weekly column called Prairie Fair for many, many years now. And this week's column is about how grocery stores entice us to buy more. There's a lot of psychology involved in the way a grocery store is set up or a supermarket is set up. We don't want to buy more food than we can use before it spoils. So you really wanna think about how much you're actually using. Ponder if you're throwing away things. If you're buying in bulk that might prompt you to be unable to use all that food before it goes to waste. And I know it's not particularly fun to plan meals perhaps but that is a good strategy to use and to write out a shopping list. Check your fridge and pantry and think about what you're buying and when it will be eaten. We have many, many resources on the NDSU Extension site to help you with meal planning, to help you with food storage, food preservation as do extension organizations all across this country. Really think about impulse and bulk purchases especially produce and dairy that have a limited shelf life. But I will tell you that this was a light bulb event during the pandemic when people learned that they can indeed freeze milk. You can freeze dairy foods. It's not gonna be as great as it was when you started but it is possible to freeze it and that is a way to avoid food waste. We're facing increased prices and groceries and lots of items right now. So that's another reason why we don't wanna waste food. Use your freezer. And then if you're eating out you might wanna request smaller portions. If you happen to be a person that takes some of the food home which is a really good idea be sure that you eat it before it goes to waste in your own refrigerator. You can certainly freeze those leftovers whether you made them yourself or whether you bought them at a restaurant. So you bought your, you had dinner out for example you can freeze those too. So these are some of the strategies you might think about as you're making your list and putting it on your refrigerator about some strategies that you could do to help avoid food waste. So next I wanted to visit with you about food recalls. So don't do this with a little cartoon ahead. I often use this when I am teaching classes. It's a joke. It's only the Erickson's why don't you just use the recalled hamburger meat? You don't wanna do that but I thought it was cute. So let's talk about three different types of recalls. And I am guessing that each of you has certainly heard of meat recalls or salad recalls like the pre-packaged salads. Lots of recalls have happened in the last many years. And there are three classes of recalls. So if you hear or something like there's a class one recall on ground beef or packaged salads. Class one means that the products could cause serious injury or death. Class two recalls and I'll provide some more examples of each of these in the coming slides. Class two recalls are for products that might cause serious injury or temporary illness. So not as serious as class one. And class three recalls are for products that are unlikely to cause injury or illness but that violate the Food and Drug Administration Regulations. So again, there are three categories of recalls. You may hear class two recall in the news some way but I wanted you to be aware of what the differences are. So what does a recall mean anyway? It means that the food producer or it could be a government agency takes the product off the market because there's reason to believe that it may cause harm to consumers. So here's your example of a class one recall. Let's say that there's a discovery of organisms such as the Bacteria Salmonella or a parasite such as Cyclospora found in a meat product or some other product. Class one that could cause very serious illness. It could cause death for some people. Class two recall, not quite as serious but you really wanna be careful. So there could be foreign objects like broken glass from perhaps the manufacturing company or metal or it could be plastic that has gotten into the product. So it's a foreign object. And class three and this could be very serious to people who have allergic responses. So this could be deadly to some people depending on whether or not they are allergic. But if you discover that there is a major allergen and it does not appear on the product label or there isn't that allergen statement correctly listed that could prompt a class three recall. Be aware of anyone in the viewing audience today is a food manufacturer. You really need to take all these things very seriously of course because no one wants to harm a consumer who might have your product. So the Food and Drug Administration regulates a lot of things including drugs, food, supplements to a lesser degree. But all of these products on the screen are subject to recall. That includes drugs, human and animal, medical devices, radiation emitting products, vaccines, blood, blood products, transplantable human tissue is under their jurisdiction, animal feed, cosmetics. And 80% of the foods eaten in the United States are subject to recall. So that's a lot of food, lots of different foods. So take these recall notices very seriously. We try to put out notification through our Facebook page for NDSU Extension Food and Nutrition about recalls. So you might wanna, if you're a Facebook user you could certainly like us or follow us on Facebook. And we do provide this regular ongoing information about recalls and lots of other things too. So stepping back to food allergens, products recalled due to an undeclared allergen may be harmful to anyone in your household with an allergy. So if that product has never been served, throw it away or return it for a refund. I'd be more along the lines, if you're not too far from the store to bring it back and the store will refund the money and the manufacturer will usually reimburse the store for the cost of that. If you have served the product, be sure to wash with soap and water any surfaces whether that's your plates, pots and pans, utensils or counters with which the product may have been in contact. So all of these can lead to cross-contamination. So allergens just like bacteria and moles and other microorganisms can lead to cross-contamination. So recalls due to bacteria and parasites could contaminate your kitchen. So here's a little bit more about that avoiding cross-contamination, which we have heard a lot about during the pandemic. So wash all cookware and utensils with hot soapy water, clear off your counters, clean them off, wash them again with hot soapy water and to take cleaning to the next level which is called sanitizing. You then can wipe any surfaces, shelves or drawers, rinse dishes and cookware with a sanitizing solution. So typically for your countertops, a diluted bleach solution would be a tablespoon, that's one tablespoon of unscented liquid chlorine bleach in a gallon of water. So you can barely tell that there's chlorine in that water. And typically for your plates and so on, you would have an even more diluted mixture but counters and objects that you might be interacting with touching your countertop, that's generally a tablespoon of unscented bleach per gallon. So here is another topic where I get a lot of questions myself, food product dates. So in the chat, type yes or no. Type yes, if you've ever been confused about a date on a food product, wondering how long you can eat that food. Okay, I'm seeing a lot of yeses that sometimes these food product dates can be confusing. Okay, let's take a look at what they mean. We'll start with the cartoon. These aren't just leftovers, Leroy. They're the best of 2006. And trust me, I have gotten calls where someone is cleaning out maybe their grandma's house or their parents' house and they find very, very old food. Might be home canned food. And they're wondering if they can still eat it. And in one case, the food was 40 years old. So at some point it is okay to throw away food. In fact, I think I sometimes give license to people to throw away food at times. So unfortunately, many consumers do misinterpret food date labels. And here's the good news, food industry experts in the U.S. say that not a single food safety, foodborne illness outbreak has been traced to eating past date food. Be aware if it says best if used by or best by or even used by in many cases, those are quality dates. That's a little different from an expiration date. So we'll talk a little more about that. Something that you may or may not know, but manufacturers do not have to put a date label on food products. In most cases, they're voluntary, not required. And most of the food product dates that you see on packages are not expiration dates, except on baby foods. You're gonna see baby foods carrying an expiration or a baby formula also having a date that you want to abide by that date. So if you have an infant in your house or you're taking care of a very young child who's eating baby food or consuming baby formula, you wanna abide by those dates because there could be some safety issues with consuming the food or nutritional issues. And you want, of course, the very young child like that to have the highest nutrition, safest food possible. So what do these labels do? They indicate freshness and companies want to convey to us as consumers when the product is at its peak. So all companies want us to know and want us to have the best possible freshness, the best possible quality. Quality and safety are two different things. Safety, if it's not safe, you could make us sick. If it's not high quality, it might not taste good, but very likely it won't make us sick. All right, so I have a chat question, another one for you. How long can you typically store eggs at home in your refrigerator? And you can indicate days or weeks. And how many weeks or how many days? And I will say that I have had calls from someone from people making cookies when I remember what they were making chocolate chip cookies. And the date on the egg carton was that day and they wanted to know if they could still make chocolate chip cookies safely. And based on your answers, I think you know the answer. Eggs, typically we say three to five weeks after the carton date. So eggs actually last a long time in your refrigerator, but over time, you're gonna find that they're not as high a quality. I wouldn't make souffles or some fancy dessert using those older eggs because they're not gonna be as high a quality, but they will be safe as long as we have stored them properly. So these are some of the definitions that you might, for labels, you might see on food products. So if you see best before or best buy, again, product is still safe. For best quality, best flavor, you would wanna use by that date. If you see a use buy date, might be best buy. There's a lot of different things because as I said, there's no real strong determination and legal authority on what the term has to be. Usually you have a one week grace period to consume the food. So if you have yogurt in your fridge or even milk, usually you have a week beyond that date as long as that food has stayed cold. And I've certainly personally eaten yogurt beyond a week after the date on the package. But if you want the best quality and also safety, try to use the products by the date, but don't be concerned if you can't quite eat it on that day that's listed on the package. Sell-by dates, these are sometimes called pull dates. These are store dates. And you might see these on dairy or eggs, sometimes meat products, that is the date meant for the store. And they would pull the product or put it on sale a couple of days before that date. But again, misinterpretation of some of these dates can lead people to throw them away while they are still okay to eat. So I have a couple of resources, several resources. So if you want, I think these are linked actually on the page. You'll be getting a link back to see the archives if you want. And I also asked our computer person to link our food storage guide and also our food freezing guide. The food freezing guide is very comprehensive. There's how to wrap meat, there's how to package almost anything on that particular guide. We also have, of course, lots of food preservation information available. So if you want to Google and see some of these resources, this is your commercial, NDSU Extension Food and Nutrition is what you Google. I'm also part of a 12-state group called NCFsyn, North Central Food Safety Extension Network. If you Google that, you will find resources for all our resources across the whole Midwestern area, 12 states. USDA also has a food keeper app. So if you ever want to do, if you like to use your smartphone and download apps, that's another way to look up this information. And it's credible information. It's one that USDA does promote on their website as well. So those are some resources for you to follow up with after this talk. So now we're gonna talk a little bit as I promised about composting. So it is a strategy to reduce or reuse wasted food. So I'm gonna have you find something else on our webinar screen. On my button or on my controls, it's under the more. So raise your hand by clicking on the hand if you have a compost bin. Wow, lots of you. I'm watching all the hands go up. Very good. Pat yourself on the back if you're a composter and if you're not, maybe that's a strategy you want to try. So what are the benefits of compost? There are many benefits. And I know if you're on the series, you probably are interested in gardening. And compost is one of the best ways that you can enrich your soil. And it also helps maintain moisture. It reduces the need for chemical fertilizer. It encourages production of beneficial bacteria and fungi. It reduces waste and it also reduces methane emissions. So there's a lot of good things. In fact, when we move from our older house into our newer house, that was one thing my husband brought along that surprised our real estate agent. He said, what are you doing? Well, I'm moving all my compost. So he took the bin with him and all the compost that was there. And we had so much that we were still using it. So what can you compost? Well, you can compost lots of things, some things you shouldn't. So food scraps and I provided several examples. So apple cores, leafy greens, onion skins, egg shells, banana peels, potatoes, coffee grounds, annual weeds. But I wanna be sure and note that you wanna be sure that these weeds have not gone to seed. Cause if you have seed heads in your compost and you use it in your garden, you're not gonna be happy. You're gonna have a lot of extra weeds cause those weed seeds can be pretty durable even in our extremely cold climate that we have in Fargo and beyond. So those are the greens. And then we can look at the brown. You can see the greens aren't necessarily all green. Browns typically are brown. So parts of trees, branches, leaves, of course they're green, but they're considered browns. Shredded paper, newspaper, sawdust, wood chips, cardboard, all of those are compostable. And we also need water. And damp is best for your compost bin, except in the winter it kind of rusts a while, but water is essential for the success of your living ecosystem. And I see our coffee filters okay to compost. Typically they would be as well. Yes. So what can't you compost? And why can't you compost them? Well, you don't wanna compost meat, fish, bones and scraps, fats, grease, lard or oils, dairy products, pet waste, yard trimmings that have been treated with chemicals because that will, those can persist a long time and could kill your plants that you're trying to grow with your compost. As I mentioned, weeds with mature seed heads. Charcoal, I did this talk one time when someone was adamant that charcoal could be composted. So I looked up some more information if the charcoal is additive free. So there aren't any extra things in your charcoal and you do this in small amounts. Some sources did say that you can add some charcoal. Overall though, charcoal is not typically recommended in your compost. If you have insect-ridden plants, disease plants, those could transfer the disease to your compost. So the main reason, and I'll ask you that as a question, why don't you wanna put meat, fish, bone, fat and all these sorts of things in your compost bin? Yes, Nina, you're exactly right. You could attract all kinds of critters. Mice, rats, you really don't want those in your back pile. You could also usually pest, but you might attract pets into the compost as well. So you don't want animals crawling around in your compost bin. And as Kyla says, it might not break down well either. So I believe we have linked this, but we do have an NDSU extension handout I worked on with one of my former students. And this lists these same steps. This is a graphic from that composting handout. So the first thing you wanna do is select a dry shady spot near a water source for your compost pile or bin, add your browns and greens, chop them up, shred larger pieces. When the material is a dark, rich color, that means it's ready to use. And after your compost pile is established, you can mix in your grass clippings that haven't been treated, fruits and vegetable waste and other green waste. And then keep it watered because those organisms need moisture to break things down. So when is this gonna be ready for you? Well, it's gonna take a little while. Compost can be ready in about three months. It kind of depends on the season, the temperature, the size of the materials, size of the pile, but it's a great way to use up food scraps. And you can also buy kitchen composters. I gave one to my young adult daughter and I went, visited her in her apartment and she told me not to look in her compost bin because it was a science experiment that might frighten me. So I didn't look in it, but you can buy those small compost bins, they're quite small. And then you could use that compost on your household plants or if you had a balcony, if you lived in an apartment, you could use it for that. So how much do you use? How do you use it? It's up to three inches on the top of the soil when you work it into the soil about eight to 12 inches. So, you know, that much and work it in about a foot. And it's best to apply some every year. So my next strategy, I wanted to visit with you quite briefly because you're gonna have a whole session all about food preservation and I'm excited to hear that. That will be from my colleague in Kansas. Again, time to interact. Raise your hand by clicking on the hand icon if you've ever preserved food. Okay, there are 128 people on this call and everybody should have their hand raised because if you have a refrigerator or freezer, you are preserving food. We all preserve food. I wanted to make some points here. Be sure to use tested resources. You can find a lot of things all over the web but not all of it would I consider safe. You wanna use research tested resources. And the research on food preservation began back during the World War II era and there's ongoing revisions. There was a major overhaul in 1994 and 2006. I noticed there's a 2015 date on the USDA resources. Be sure that you're using tested resources. You can find those from any extension organization across the country, USDA, it's all free and we don't want you to get sick because unless you can food properly, especially our low acid foods like vegetables, meats, you could put yourself at risk for botulism. So we want you to have safe, high quality food. We don't wanna have you waste what you are growing this summer in your garden but be sure that you're canning foods properly. So this is a slide I like to show people. I'm really not trying to scare you but I do see people doing similar things now with canning food. This happened a long time ago, 1931 and eventually this led to 13 people dying including five people in one family and the source was improperly home canned vegetables. Very sad situation. If we find old heritage recipes for canned goods, I always tell people to go ahead and frame it but don't use it. If it's written in someone's handwriting you wanna preserve that memory, do that but we wanna use updated canning and food preservation guidelines. They're readily available. We don't want anyone to get sick. So these are some of the research tested recipes. So freezing has been research tested to make the optimum quality foods. We have lots of dehydration or drying recipes, formulations, jams and jellies, pickling and canning in general. So again, you can find a lot of these resources through extension. You can check out NCFSON, I mentioned that acronym. That's our regional group. And if you're not from North Dakota or you're certainly always welcome to use any of our resources but you could visit your state and you will have resources in your states to help you if you have questions as well. So for example, when you're freezing vegetables you, for best quality in most cases you do want to heat treat or blanch those. If you don't want to blanch them you're not gonna get sick by just freezing it but you might have vegetables that aren't as great of quality. So blanching can help with quality. Freezer burn, you probably have seen this that sort of that grayish look. It's a quality issue, it's not a safety issue. So use the right containers when you're freezing because you don't want to waste food again due to dehydration. But again, it's not probably you won't like eating the food but it most likely won't hurt you. Some things to think about if you don't have a thermometer an appliance thermometer in your refrigerator or freezer some have built in thermometers, keep this in mind. So if you have your temperature of your freezer at zero degrees Fahrenheit typically the length of storage is a year at best quality. If that temperature pops up to five degrees Fahrenheit that decreases the length of storage for best quality. And if we get all the way up to 30 degrees just under freezing five days. So make sure your freezer is at the right temperature. This one you might have grown up in homes where you use paraffin wax on top. We don't recommend that because you could actually have some microorganisms getting into cracks around that wax. We do recommend the two-piece lids and I know they were difficult to get during the pandemic because a lot of people were canning and preserving food and there were supply chain issues. But the manufacturers have told us directly that they do have these supplies and they're working very hard to get them across the country. So we don't recommend reusing those the tops but you can use the screw bands. So you don't wanna use the lids but the screw bands can be used. Pickling, it's a great way to preserve food. One thing I wanna note and you can read this as I'm going through but be sure that your vinegar is 5% acetic acid. Last year when I was picking up vinegar to do some food preservation at home I noticed the one the type of vinegar that was with the food preservation supplies happened to be the store brand. I had to go and find the name brand that actually had 5% acetic acid. The store brand had 4% acetic acid. So 5% is what you're looking for, for best safety and also your best quality. Ah, and here's another one. I get this question or comment periodically or I hear it on Facebook that people are canning in their ovens. Don't do that, that's not a good thing to do. Not safe. We can't get the right heat penetration in an oven. Yes, you might turn the oven to 350 degrees but that doesn't mean that your jar, the interior of your jar is reaching the safe temperature that you want it to reach. Microwave ovens are not a safe way to actually can foods and neither is your dishwasher. So pressure canners, water bath canners, steam canners, we have information about how to safely can in any of those appliances. So again, just please use the research tested recipes. You want your products to be safe, high quality and so on. So I have in finishing up today, I have some resources that you might want to explore more to raise awareness of food waste. So this poster goes way back, I believe it goes back to World War II. So it's not only now that we're talking about food waste, back in the day, they certainly were very cautious about food and some of their thoughts. Buy it with thought, cook it with care, serve just enough, save what we'll keep, eat what would spoil, homegrown as best, don't waste it. So they were pretty smart. These are our predecessors in most cases, maybe your parents, maybe your grandparents depending on your age, but they were certainly very cautious about wasting food. We've talked about composting, that is a way to repurpose wasted food and certainly donating food is a way to reduce food waste. And there's also an ugly food movement. You may see sometimes in some grocery stores they will have food that doesn't look as beautiful as the perfect food. One in five fruits and vegetables grown don't fit the strict cosmetic standards. They're not as beautiful as the rest. The carrots might be crooked. The cucumbers may not be straight. The apple is in the right size and that can cause them to go to waste. So if you have the opportunity to buy imperfect produce, it's totally fine. It will have the same nutritional value even if it isn't perfectly straight or perfectly colored. Maybe it looks kind of strange, like that strawberry, but that strawberry will have the same amount of vitamin C and fiber and other nutrients as a beautiful strawberry that looks like cosmetically better than that. There is a US food waste challenge. It started back in 2013 and it was called Let's Talk Trash. And in 2020, right during the pandemic, two years ago, the US Environmental Protection Agency, the FDA and the USDA renewed their commitment to food waste reduction. So there is a nationwide commitment that we all should try our best to reduce food waste. And the goal is to reduce wasted food, 50% by 2030. So that's a lot. But hopefully you have some strategies that you can use in your own household. And with that, it's now time for all of us to write down or text ourselves a goal for reducing food waste. You can do that a couple, you know, those two different ways or however works best for you, but come up with a goal for yourself. And don't tell me about it. I don't need to know, only you need to know, but put that note where you will see it and then try to take action toward reducing waste. And again, I thank you for participating in our webinars. We certainly hope these are helpful to you and I'm happy to take some questions. All right, well, we definitely have some questions. I will just go from the top in case we run out of time, but I don't think we should. There's only about five or six of them right now, but back to the near the beginning, Julie, somebody was wondering, are peelings from fruit and veggies and bones from bone and meat considered or counted as part of food waste? So the peelings- Yes, they- Way back when you had that chart with all the different food waste stuff. I believe they are. Okay. I think this one actually was one from, that's from our fairly more recent and this one might've been when you were talking about the vinegar type stuff. Somebody asked, what if 6% acetic acid? That certainly would be safe. It's a minimum of 5%. It might make your pickles taste a little bit more acidic, more sour. It certainly would be safe. But what I'm seeing more often is 4% and probably because it would be less expensive for the manufacturer to put less acid in compared to water. Okay. Along the same lines, somebody's wondering that, or yeah, they said they accidentally bought that last year back when you were talking about the vinegar, I believe, and it does higher acid alter the flavor or affect the canning process? I think it would alter the flavor, but I would still can it using the same recommendations for water bath canning, for example, for pickles or whatever it happens to be. I would just stick with that, that amount of time. Okay. Sticking with the canning. Next question was, are steam canners USDA approved? There's been a lot of research. In fact, one of your previous speakers from Wisconsin Madison has done a lot of research or self on steam canning. So I would encourage you to go to that NC Epson, that acronym I mentioned with our North Central Extension Network and go to the Wisconsin information. They do have their steam canning information online and it has been peer reviewed and tested and so on. So be sure anytime that you're following these different methods that you follow them exactly as they're stated. That means the proportions of ingredients, the amount of time and all that sort of thing. You can't get creative when you're doing home food preservation, especially canning. You want to be your scientist. You are put on your lab coat and go in the kitchen because you're a scientist. All right, so this is the last one of the ones I copied over, then I'll have to jump back to the chat because I see more have been coming in. But I have a couple about compost. So the first one was, do you cover your outdoor compost bin during the winter? I don't cover ours. I mean, you certainly could, but you're just getting that extra snow water in there and it's never caused us any issue. So I think it's fine. It would be either way. But if you have an indoor composter in your kitchen, you do want to keep that covered because you are growing lots of things. So I would do that. How often do you need to stir the compost piles? Stir regularly. Is there a definite time? Typically, every couple of weeks or so, just get in there with a pitchfork and start turning it around. And you're gonna find that the compost itself is going to start settling out at the bottom. So stir regularly. I don't, there's not a magic answer to that one, but a couple of times a month, I would say, not daily. Sure, yeah. What about chicken waste? Can you throw them in the pile or that in the pile? So I, like when we say chicken waste, I'm not sure what that means. If you're talking feathers or, no, I, okay. So I, we have specialists on campus that specialize in composting manure. So there is a resource on the NDSU Extension site about animal waste. And if you, Deb, if you want to follow up with me, I'd have to look up where that is kept and I'd be happy to send you the link to that. But I wouldn't put, you know, uncomposted chicken manure into your, your compost bin. I'd keep it, keep it separate. I'll stick with compost since we have a couple more here. Do you see bugs in the compost? There probably will be some bugs that are present. Is that gonna hurt it? You know, it gets pretty hot if your composting is going well. And it probably will kill the bugs that are there. We have not had issues with, with bugs and flies. I think it gets, it gets kind of hot for them. I would jump back up here a little bit to see that I'm on a couple I missed. What do you think about beeswax impregnated cotton wraps for storing foods? That is a question I have never been asked. I would have to look into that. I, it's not a typical recommendation. I will just say that. I, you know, the storage information we have is about, you know, using proper containers and so on. So you can certainly follow up with me more on that, but I, I haven't really looked into research on that. I would rather see you using airtight containers, you know, glass is an excellent container for storing food and probably better than, than anything. Does vinegar wane in acidity over time? It probably won't wane. It probably might even get more acidic over time. You might look at the, the storage date on even your vinegar bottle. So I would, I would try to use up the vinegar within the best buy date, because I believe many of the vinegar products do have a use buy date or best buy date. But, you know, if I were to guess and I haven't looked into the research on this, most likely it's, you know, acid will hang in there for a long time, but you might see some evaporation of the water. Cause it's just acetic acid and water that makes up the vinegar. For sanitizing with bleach, does bleach lose its potency in the bottle over time? Yes. Bleach will lose its, its potency. So if you ever have worked in a food service type situation, they do recommend that you, you know, remake those bleach solutions daily or, you know, whatever your policy says, it does lose its strength over time. And if you had a bucket, say you were sanitizing countertops or whatever happens to be, anytime you get food particles in that bucket with the, you know, with your sanitizer, that will break down the ability of that sanitizer to do its job. So don't make a ton of bleach at a time is what my, my message is. So if you want to use bleach as a sanitizer and put it in a spray bottle, I'd make a smaller amount, you know, maybe a quart, maybe a teaspoon per quart, something like that. Got a couple that came in in the Q and A, I'm going to jump over there and look at one of them. What if we don't have a refrigerator here in the house? How can we reduce food waste? If you don't have a refrigerator, well, drying is, you know, drying is always a possibility for foods. If you have electricity, an electric food dehydrator is a good option. And the rest of you can pop in with, but we, we certainly, you know, there's old methods of preserving food back, you know, when most people didn't have a refrigerator, they use techniques like salting foods and, you know, bigging cellars, those sorts of things. Cause it's colder, you know, and right now we still have a refrigerator outside. We don't recommend people storing food outside, but certainly that is another possibility. One about taking food out and then re-freezing it. Lila said, I took out ground turkey to thaw in the refrigerator. They went out to eat for two days and then now she wants to re-freeze it. Can you re-freeze it? Yes, you can re-freeze foods for best quality, though you, it's best to re-freeze the food when it still has ice crystals present, then you're going to get your very best quality, but you can re-freeze it as long as it has been in your refrigerator. And you do want to thaw foods in your, in your refrigerator, not in your counter or in your sink for, for safety and also quality. So you can re-freeze foods, but expect some quality loss. And while we're on that topic of frozen foods, as long as a food remains solidly frozen. So if you have a two-year-old turkey for Thanksgiving and it's been solidly frozen, it's certainly fine to use. A lot of questions still on composting. And Mary put a nice little whole thing in the chat there. If you guys can see that, I think it actually is to, it didn't go to everybody. So I'll copy and paste it. She's saying that Prairie Yard and Garden did a show on composting several weeks ago and it's on pioneer.org and also on YouTube. So I'm going to paste back in what Mary put in there to everybody. But some other stuff on composting, they were wondering eggshells. I think I've heard those are good, right? Somebody's asking eggshells, or if that's okay to throw in. That was on our list of, they called it, it was in the greens. So yes, you can compost those. Yeah. And then somewhere asked what items should not be. I don't know if there's lists out there in any of our PDFs about that stuff that shouldn't be. There should be on my one slide, I talked about not meat and dairy and those sorts of items that are higher in protein because they will attract pests. Yeah. That looks like we're just about it. I know one, I guess I wanted to ask about the temperature on when to know that the compost is ready to flip. But I think it depends on the size of the pile and stuff. It's kind of, yeah, you're right. It's when to flip, just maybe put a note on your calendar and set a time when you're going to flip it periodically. A lot of the sources I saw every couple of weeks or so. One last one I see here, asking if there's a certificate provided after. Yes, in fact, there is a certificate that is on the event page for this program and you can print it out and you can count this as continuing education. You've got my email, drop me an email if we somehow missed your question. Happy to follow up with more information.